Appalachian Man interview-Zach

hi guys from putnam county west virginia we're back baby what's going on son what's happening what's happening dynamite here baby where's my crazy bird where's my kids hey man what do you baby all day ain't going nowhere we'll be here until the day i die all right zach yes sir zach where'd you grow up where are you from originally pogo west virginia and tell me about uh your childhood you had both your with your mom and dad growing up no i had just my just my dad well like a mom figure my grandma was was there but my mom pretty much abandoned me at birth um don't really know exactly how to go about that but i had my dad and he was he was the the more parent i've seen every day i lived with him how would you describe your childhood rough rough it was it was rough yes definitely what ways uh just growing up with uh the want of a boy wanting his mother is always strong especially whenever you're you know at such a young age five and under you know you're gonna be one there right there by your mama's hip you know and so i ran my grandma absolutely rampant you know i mean i ran her rampant because i you know i wanted my mom all the time and she was the only one that was there so was my dad but it was it was a hard childhood um got picked on a lot in school and didn't have mom and dad was kind of uh abusive in ways but it was uh i don't really know man it was it was it was really rough that's yeah what kind of kid were you in high school uh kind of kid was on high school um well i lost my dad my freshman year at high school and then uh i ended up getting placed in placement center not even three months after you died i didn't want to go to placement i just wanted somebody to understand that hey you know i'm grieving and how'd you lose your dad he died on a four-wheeler out heiser creek about a mile from my house he was uh he was working where no he was riding forward oh just four weeks yeah yeah he got on the four-wheeler and he done this every day you know he'd come home from work and you know he was up there at jager building the military base up there while he was wiring and he was electrician and you know he'd come home every day and it wasn't you know nothing for my dad to go you know get on the four-wheeler and say hey i'm rolling jerry's you know hop down the road and come back an hour or two later yeah oh this time you know he leaves at 6 30 and doesn't come back and you know i get a knock on the door at 6 40 saying that he's in the creek and slap boulders off of four-wheeler and everything so i ended up losing him september 12th of 2011 that day so my high school pretty much was screwed after that it went to and you lived with uh who after that my grandma she uh bless her heart and my grandpa too but my grandma's mom had a trailer put next to my grandpa's log cabin out hyzer and well when her mom died my dad ended up getting her trailer put off and he put a trailer there so when he died i took the trailer over with my grandma until i come of age to be able to pay the bills and all that other good stuff so i ended up living with her until 18 and i lost her in 2017. and what after you graduate high school would you do um well i ended up trying to go and starting into school but that didn't work out so i ended up going and doing environmental management landscaping over and over did you finish high school yeah i do yeah i'm graduate class of 2014. yep and uh like a lot of people down here in this part of the country drugs are a part of the picture oh yeah were they for you as well oh yeah um it started like i'm 25 now i didn't it didn't start until i was 20 but that was after a lot of a lot of mental exhaustion you know i mean i lost you know dad i didn't snap from my dad until 2014 and then me and my son's mom split up and that just kind of sent me over the deep end and you know i didn't want to be here anymore you know i got real suicidal and then drugs started getting into the play with it and i was on day report so i couldn't really smoke any marijuana or anything so i just didn't want to be here anymore so i started doing that it was like i said it's telling you earlier it's in prolonging or not prolonging but just helping speed up the process of an inevitable death this is indirect suicide so i did that for about two years on and off and now so what was your drug mostly methamphetamine that's it's it's real down here man it's it's real yeah crystal meth and heroin are yeah the big drugs yep it's it's real it's no joke i lose friends over it all the time i've lost one of my best friends john baker he's 43 years old the man i was in logan and he called me crying saying that he needed me he needed me to need me and i didn't get to him and then the next day i get a phone call and he was found laying up over there at a hot dog place over in cross lanes and uh yeah drugs are so prevalent down here for your generation it is it is how many i mean what percentage of your friends are using drugs if i had to honestly if i had to say out of all the guys that i knew and all the girls that i knew growing up from school man i'd have to say at least if somebody ain't popping pills or if one of them ain't drinking or it's or it could be they're hard dope i mean it's i'd have to say like 60 70 160 70 from my class or any of the other people that i grew up that was from a older class or under me i've i see that too yeah you know what do you think the reason for that is personal opinion the reason for that lack of stability structure might be an in-home thing with the parents because a lot of the kids around this generation honestly they don't want to work either say all they want to do is just you know party and do drugs man so that's a lot of it is the younger generation but and aside from hunting or or you know just walking the mountains there's not a whole lot to do here oh i mean you got hunting you got white water rafting you can go down the new river i go down there all the time and hitting i got to camp there i do fishing i'll fish on the greenbrier in the new um it's a beautiful part of the country oh yeah it's it really is it's it's beautiful and hidden it's absolutely beautiful you have it been i mean you go spectacular yes but uh but still there's so much addiction there is it's it's everywhere there is no place that you can go that doesn't have it what do you think of the future for this region with so much of your generation i'm hoping that it doesn't that i'm hoping that everything doesn't continue to decline and you know go to fault like it is because it is it's slowly withering away i mean i can see half of half of my my kids from my class are you know i'm i am one of them statistics i did mess around with it that's my bad deed and you know you gotta be accountable for it now i am one part of that statistic but it's real yeah it's it's not a joke it's that's killing us yeah so currently are you using still or no i've been clean since august 12th i would want to say yeah august 12th of it's 2021 now so august of 2019 because my son's birthday was on the 16th and that was when i was in logan was whenever i was my buddy john baker called me and it just really hit me it was like you know he got hit with a hot shot he didn't i don't i don't think he did a hot shot though what i think happened is this uh he ended up doing too much of one or the other together and it slowed and blew his heart and i heard about that and it killed me to where i like to drink a beer every once in a while i didn't even want to touch marijuana i didn't want to touch beer man it's just it hurt me you know i mean he was 43 years old but that man was like we was together every day yeah and then your young son yeah gave you another reason yeah and my son man his first two years after mine and his mom you know split i take accountability for it i take responsibility for it i shouldn't i should have been there but in my eyes i didn't want to give him another my mom you know i mean i didn't want to pretend that i'm there and not you know even when i'm there i'm not there yeah but you're currently you're raising your son yeah well me and his mom do split i'll have him yeah she'll have him throughout the week or if i have available time i'll come and pick him up throughout the week and keep him and take him to school i got court-ordered visitations with him on the weekends so he's he's my inspiration he's my drive that's great and you're working currently oh yeah yeah what do you do now i work at wendy's right now on nitro i'm getting ready to start trying to train for management and then um currently trying to branch out and get out of the fast food right now but i mean if it's a job as a job pays my bills and keeps my kid and what he needs so yeah and yeah and you're a fighter as well oh yeah yeah yeah i uh i actually met you through uh it's almost like a like a fight club thing that they had organized here what's it called rough and rowdy so they have it they can that's like this charleston convention yeah man it's like a it's like a fight club but it's uh yeah you guys no helmets no helmets no head gear no uh no no head gear no knee pads shin pads uh no yards you get paired up and you guys beat the crap yeah you get paired up and you just beat crap at each other man it's uh yeah it's a i think it's a west virginia originated thing now i've seen it all the time my buddies have done it cousins have done it i've never done it and then wyatt and talked me into it and i was like all right man i was like let's see let's go so i ended up fighting an amateur boxer and ended up winning so good for you yeah it was pretty cool you know i've always been a fighter though man i like to fight yeah only self-defense i've actually never started a fist fight before i've always ended them that's great what uh the most important thing you've learned in your life most important thing i learned in my life time life and love my friend those all mixed together with me because i've buried a lot a lot of people the only people that's left that carry my last name is my son me and my granddad that's it so like time life and love that's all that is one thing to me because i've lost a lot of each and that's the best advice that i could give or anything i could say as as of that cherish it because telling you it's i took for granted my time and my life and the love of the people that i had around me and now that they're all gone it's sitting here wishing that i could have done things differently do things differently before you ever have to think about man i wish i could have done things differently do things differently well you you've changed your life yeah drastically yeah i mean the role model you are for your son is pretty great yeah because i mean you're if you're going to love somebody love them don't you know beat around the bush with them don't fake it don't have two faces don't be a snake in the grass just be real you're if you love somebody love somebody if you are going to put time in somebody put time in somebody if that's because that's your life take it seriously see ain't problems tomorrow you ain't promised the next five seconds my dad went 6 30 he was gone at 6 40 10 minutes you know take don't take it for granted it's it's not promised all right zach thank you so much for sharing your story oh you're not a problem brother i appreciate it wish you and your son lots of luck i appreciate it you

Channel: Soft White Underbelly

Views: 830,638

Keywords: swu, soft white underbelly, appalachian man interview, west virginia

Id: 7KOIq-3kXKk

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021